Jake stares at the doodle. He knows it. Jesus. Now he understands what all the security was about.
21
Gideon holds the diary in shaking hands. He sits on the room’s hard floor, rests his back against the shelving, afraid to read. He feels beaten — as though assaulted and battered by some invisible enemy. Floored by the ghost of his father.
He looks up at all the handwritten journals around him — a complete personal history of the father he never knew. And the man wrote more than twenty years of it in code.
Why?
He shakes his head and blinks. Darkness presses like shovelled earth against every pane of glass in the house. He feels entombed. Carefully, he opens the cover and on the right-hand inside page is the inscription: ΓΚΝΔΜΥ ΚΛΥ.
It makes him smile. He runs his fingers over the top of the page and feels himself slipping back to childhood. His father never kicked a football with him, never swung a cricket bat, never took him swimming. But he played mind games with him. Nathaniel spent hours devising puzzles, teasers, problems and games that imbued in him powers of logic and the roots of classical learning.
The letters ΓΚΝΔΜΥ ΚΛΥ are ancient Greek, which his father considered the first true alphabet, the source of European, Latin and Middle Eastern alphabets. And he recognised its importance in mathematics, physics and astronomy. His son was made to learn every letter. To test the boy, and to break the boredom, the professor devised a simple code. The twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet assumed reverse values to their English equivalents, so Omega represented A and so on until Alpha represented X. The obsolete Greek letters Digamma and Qoppa represented the final English letters Y and Z. For years Nathaniel would leave his son coded notes around the house — until the relationship became too strained for any form of communication.
Gideon struggles to remember the code. It’s been more than fifteen years. Then it comes to him. ΓΚΝΔΜΥ ΚΛΥ means VOLUME ONE. He glances up again at the dozens of books and wonders how many coded words have been written. It could take a lifetime to decipher them all.
A lifetime to translate a lifetime.
He turns another page, and feels queasy. The handwriting is a savage reminder of the suicide note. He tries to make sense of the first paragraph but he is too rusty to get further than a few words. From the low coffee table he picks up some paper and a couple of pens — black and red. He constructs a table, writing the Greek letters on the left and to the right, the English.
Using the table, he scans the opening page and quickly translates ΛΩΕΡΩΛΠΥΝ into NATHANIEL and ΧΡΩΖΥ into CHASE. The journal is written in the first person and contains his father’s day-to-day thoughts.
He flicks through a dozen or so more pages, not looking for anything in particular, fascinated that he can travel backwards or forwards through days, months or years of his father’s life. Halfway through the journal, the writing becomes bolder. The passages look as though they’ve been written with vigour and excitement. Years of speed-reading have trained Gideon’s eyes to hop diagonally down a document in search of key words.
ΖΕΚΛΥΡΥΛΣΥ, ΨΝΚΚΦ and ΖΩΧΗΠΤΠΧΥ leap out at him.
He hopes he’s made a mistake. Prays that tiredness has made him jump to the wrong conclusion. On its own, ΖΕΚΛΥΡΥΛΣΥ may be innocuous enough; he’d expect his father to mention it. It means STONEHENGE.
It’s the other two words that are chilling his soul.
ΨΝΚΚΦ is BLOOD.
And ΖΩΧΗΠΤΠΧΥ is SACRIFICE.
22
Jake Timberland flings his suit in a corner and sits on the edge of his giant black leather bed with built-in fifty-inch plasma and room dimmers. He’s too wired to get any sleep and strangely enough not in the mood to go hunting cute-ass-would-be-wags for the rest of the night. In any case, the date isn’t over. Thanks to his mobile phone, it’s about to go virtual. The beauty of technology.
In his left hand is his iPhone and in his right the piece of paper with the padlock doodle that the American lovely gave him. Caitlyn to be more precise. Caitlyn Lock.
Just being seen within touching distance of ‘The Lock’, as she’s known, could make him an ‘A-Lister’. He reckons that right now she’ll be doing one of three things. She could still be partying, which he doubts because the gorillas probably wouldn’t allow her that much freedom. She could be having a drink with some of the other clean-cut cuties she was hanging with. Possible. Or she could be a good little girl and already in bed. Probable. Whichever it is, she’ll be thinking about him. You don’t kiss someone like she did and then not think about it later.
What he has to do is tap into that. Tap in and stretch it while it’s still fresh. Give himself something to build a little romance on. And the perfect tool to pull off that little trick is sexy texting. Nothing hard core. Just a couple of short notes to say that he can’t stop thinking about her. Start off casual and polite then feel his way in, reveal a little more of his emotions. No point simply gushing it all out on the first message. If you do that, the girl won’t reply, she’ll just leave you hanging on until you try again.
Jake gets typing. Hope you got home ok. It was great to meet you tonight. Jake. No, that’s not good. He rewrites: Hope you got home ok. It was GREAT to meet you tonight. Jake.
Still not right.
He remembers her age. Considerably younger than him. He adjusts again: Hope u r ok. Gr8 2 meet u! Jake x.
He allows himself a satisfied smile and hits send. Phones are terrific. He watches the little virtual envelope on the screen fold itself up, develop wings and then fly off, straight to the heart of the woman he loves. Well yeah, maybe. For now it’s lust, pure and simple. But let’s face it, without that, love probably doesn’t have a chance.
The phone beeps. Wow, she’s replied quickly. Good sign.
U can ring if u want x.
Not what he expected. Not what he wanted either. A little text flirting before turning in for the night was a perfect idea, but a conversation right now could blow things. He thinks. When a girl says you can ring if you want, that’s not a request, it’s an instruction.
Jake pulls off his socks and shirt, grabs a glass of water from the bathroom and climbs in bed. He feels almost panicky as he calls her.
‘It’s Jake. Hi.’
‘Hi there.’ Her voice is soft and a little sleepy. ‘I wondered if you’d ring or text.’
‘Even after you saw me sit down in a puddle?’
She laughs a little. ‘Especially after you dumped your ass in a puddle.’
‘Actually, I didn’t dump my ass — one of your apes did.’
‘That would be Eric. He has a thing for me. I’ve seen him rough guys up much worse. Much, much worse than you got and I didn’t even kiss them.’
‘Remind me not to put Eric on my Christmas card list.’
‘He’s just protective.’
‘So I noticed. Why did you do that?’
‘Do what?’
‘Kiss me.’
‘Ah, that would be because I wanted to.’ Her voice is almost sleepy. ‘And let’s face it, you wanted me to.’
‘I did?’
‘I’ve never seen a man aching so badly to be kissed.’
He laughs. ‘You’ve no idea how much.’